ABDM building blocks: ABHA, registries & consent
India's national digital health stack in one read — the IDs, registries, and consent layer everything else plugs into.
One mission, five building blocks
The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) is India's national digital health infrastructure. Rather than one giant system, it is a small set of building blocks that public and private systems plug into.
ABHA — the health account
The Ayushman Bharat Health Account gives every person a 14-digit health ID and an ABHA address (like anita@abdm). It is the anchor that lets records from different hospitals belong to the same person.
HPR & HFR — the registries
- Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR) — verified doctors, nurses and other professionals
- Health Facility Registry (HFR) — hospitals, clinics, labs, pharmacies
Registries make identity trustworthy: when a record says "issued by Dr. X at Facility Y," both are verifiable entities.
HIE-CM — consent first
The Health Information Exchange & Consent Manager is the heart of the architecture: health information flows only through explicit, granular, revocable patient consent artefacts. A hospital (as HIP — Health Information Provider) shares records to an app (as HIU — Health Information User) only when the consent manager says so.
UHI & NHCX — services and claims
- Unified Health Interface (UHI) — open network for discovering and booking health services
- National Health Claims Exchange (NHCX) — standardized rails for insurance claims
The standards underneath
ABDM exchanges are FHIR R4 documents following India's NRCeS profiles, signed and exchanged via the ABDM gateway. That is why FHIR fluency is the entry ticket to building on India's health stack.
Where to go next
- NRCeS FHIR profiles — what India constrains and extends
- Scan & Share — ABDM's fastest-growing real-world flow
- DPDP and health data — the privacy law every ABDM participant must honor